The Highest Bough
by puzzlepuzzle
Summary: Christmas Story: Every Christmas reopens old wounds for Athrun. And the last Christmas created a new one with nobody but him to remember it. So now, he tries to make her remember the past and the one mistake they made.


**The Highest Bough

* * *

**

The candlelight was a mist of golden dust in the darkness of the hall, and a thousand glasses were raised, so the sound of the contents swished musically in the floating orbs of clear crystal. Those echoed with murmurs of appreciation as the men gazed upon the world they dominated and the women in their night splendor. Red blossomed in the centre of tables with napkins pinned to the green of poinsettias' undisguised leaves, and there was a strange anticipation in the air.

The log cake was an immense monstrosity, in Athrun's opinion.

"Tell me," He heard Yzak drawl under his breath. "Is there anything you'd rather be doing at this point?"

He glanced at the Generalissimo of ZAFT, who was wearing a dark suit not dissimilar to Athrun's and a rather deep frown. Yzak Joule was adjacent to a woman with dark hair swept and pinned with pearls to form a crown on her rather attractive, sharp-featured head. She glanced in their direction, but did not bother smiling, although they did raise their goblets.

"I don't know." Athrun answered, and this was an honest answer.

On one hand, parties like this one took away the sting of recollection and the pain of remembrance, but numbness and the frivolous activities that covered the spectrum from twelve-course dinners to bout after bout of golden, bubbly liquid and coming face to face with a rather dazed but satisfied female stranger, in bed no less, was never a good enough distraction for anything in particular.

Yzak frowned a little more, making him look rather menacing even with the flattering glow in the room and the accentuated features his ancestors had passed from Joule to Joule. "I can think of a whole host of other things I'd rather be doing."

"Tell Miss Hahenfuss that." Athrun said politely, and he drank a little more.

"You do realize how hermit-like you sound, do you not?" Yzak said cruelly, smiling his twisted smile. He had accumulated a healthy amount of trepidation and a fair amount of intimidation from his subordinates, who respected him partially because of Yzak's exceptional leadership and mostly out of fear. Even after all these years, even when they were men in their prime, even when Yzak did not lose his temper quite as easily as before, Athrun was still quite impressed at how Yzak could make the chairs jump when he shouted.

"Hermit-like?" Athrun said courteously, without realizing that there was the customary pinched politeness residing in his voice again.

Yzak smiled a little wider. "Exactly. Unless you've swung over to the other side."

Athrun faked a horrified expression for Yzak and controversy's sake. But then, he smirked eventually and shook his head.

"You know," Athrun said quietly, "It was only last year that made a difference."

Yzak's eyes registered a moment of puzzlement and some suspicion, but he did not pursue with questions, and Athrun was grateful for that.

They continued their meal in relative silence, talking only when they were spoken to. But the sound of people laughing and the high spirits continued, and the diners become merrier and merrier, and so the faces became less and less indistinguishable from the others, and the flow of champagne never ceasing for a moment's rest.

There were girls laughing over jokes the men had pulled from the now-deflated crackers, and the goose and pig grinned hideously with a rosy apple in their beak and mouth respectively. There were politicians and royal families and crones and old men with canes in their hands and their moods in tune with the cheer the decorations and the golden world the host had created for celebration's sake.

And an unconscious memory pursued the conscious mind.

Or was it the other way around?

He was aware of the lights becoming softer and coyer in their sable colors, and the tree in the centre of the immense hall becoming a faraway speck in the mind's eye. The orchestra was a mesh of brass and gleaming ochre wood and lazy sound. He could still visualize her standing beneath the tree, asking, with a rather awkward shyness he loved about her, if the tree was even real.

The memory was a nuisance.

He took a sip.

There had been a pine fragrance in the halo of air around them, both unnoticed by the rest of the world that was moving from merriment to merriment, and in the pine fragrance, fresh and slightly wistful in its musk; he wondered if she had ever pined for him. What difference a year made.

What little difference a little year made.

That one night and the torment of being the only one who remembered- the one who would know what had transpired that night and the one who would always know in spite of the other person not knowing.

At that time, he could see no trace of a man's kisses on her neck or a mark of a feverish mouth on the arch on the white flesh of her collarbone. But that was being presumptuous, he had realized, because that would have been what he was capable of and what he would have done if she had allowed for it, but perhaps not another. Or was that another form of presumption?

What had he said to a partially-intoxicated person who had asked a disconnected but nevertheless sane question?

He had told her that the tree they were observing in their slight stupor was not artificial. She had smiled a mesmerizing, dazed smile that made him want to weep suddenly. Weep for all their foolish youth and weep for all their lost dreams and the tears he wanted to shed for loving and hurting her but was unable to.

Then she had said, "There's no star."

What had he said in response to a perfectly disjointed observation?

His memory would always hold the shimmering dust of the night and the cringe-worthy words his lips had dared uttered. Had it been the influence of alcohol?

No. Athrun hadn't been drunk with alcohol. He had been drunk with something entirely different but no less potent.

Now, he reflected upon the Christmas Eve's night exactly a year ago. It had been a night like this one, the same politicians, just a little older, just a little more jaded, just a little more ostentatious than last year. The years always made the rich richer, in Athrun's opinion, and the jewels were set in larger frames every years as the women weighed heavier and heavier with diamonds every year.

Last year, he had been here- sitting here, drinking here, wondering when he could pick himself up and leave. He had been deciding if checking his watch was rude, when she had moved into the room, quietly, like a shadow, although the neighbors by her chair had immediately seized her in conversation. He had checked his watch then, and realized that not even half the night was over.

If she had noticed him, she ignored him. As she always had.

He had gone back to Orb after the Second War, simply because it might have made a difference. It didn't.

She somehow managed to transfer him to a separate branch far away from the royal troops. It didn't require very much brilliance or brainwork to know who had orchestrated the transfer- not when Cagalli Yula Atha was the Supreme Commander of Orb and the last surviving member of the main branch of royalty there.

He hadn't been disappointed or angered by her decision- it had been wishful thinking in any case. He had nary a glimpse of her- and ZAFT always welcomed him back.

By the time Christmas Eve had arrived last year, he hadn't seen her face to face for six years. It was natural for her to ignore him.

But he couldn't ignore her.

Perhaps she had been a little depressed or a little less inhibitive that night- she managed round after round and her cheeks glowed with a perfumed headiness and a strangely alluring blush. She had soon excused herself from the diamond tessellations of couples waltzing and crept off to the behemoth fir, perhaps as unconsciously as the flame that drew the moth to it.

He had excused himself from his partner, a lady he had gotten close to that evening with the same old half-hearted intention of performing the same old routine of a Christmas fling. Of course, she was like the others- an unnamed person who had golden hair and eyes and was quite willing to perform the same routine and forget about it after the twelve days of Christmas were well and truly over, with nothing to remember except that Christmas hadn't been as empty as it might have been.

But that night was a jerk in the routine- and it irritated him. What the hell was she doing here in the Plants when all he needed of her was a faint anger of betrayal and how painful it had been to love her?

"It's been a long time." He had said to her.

She turned around from the tree and smiled, making his heart race, and then she ruined it by frowning, although the delayed reaction was rather comical. She wasn't exactly drunk- just slightly, but enough for her to be a little strange.

"Wha're you doing here?" Her tone was sharp but she managed to slur her words, making the picture rather incongruent because she was so beautiful in the dusky champagne silk that pressed to her like a second skin, baring everything that tempted him- her neck and shoulders and a hint of her breasts. She looked lost .

He refused to answer her pointless question, but threw it back at her. "What are you doing here?"

"I have an invitation, you know," She said, rather irritably in a sudden display of her sometimes irrational temper, "The Chairman of Plants told me he would be most insulted if I ignored it for the sixth time running."

She glared at him, and he began to laugh.

"What's your problem?" She retorted.

He shook his head. "I don't have one. I came here to look at the tree too."

"Liar." She said listlessly. "You came here to remind me of all the stupidity I displayed in the past."

"That's our mutual responsibility." He said, only half-jokingly. Because it was partially true. But he could not stay angry with her- the ghosts of the past were catching up with them, and the clock was chiming in the distance, unheard by anyone but the two who gazed at the tree that towered over them.

"There's no star." She observed. She raised an arm and pointed, and he understood what she meant.

The highest bough was bare. The rest of the tree however, was decked in garlands of silver and baubles and tinsels in varying shades of gold and red. It was difficult to spot the absence of the crown, however, the tree was immense, reaching the top of the room and nearly outstripping the chandeliers.

He offered a few logical explanations. The star had fallen off, or maybe they hadn't bothered in the first place, as the evidence seemed to suggest- the higher the boughs were, the sparser the decorations. The planners were either cutting corners, or perhaps this was for aesthetic effect, unless the step ladders had been insufficient or ineffective.

The higher the boughs were, the fewer the baubles, and so it tapered, the tinsel stretching thinner and thinner, until there was nothing at the utmost peak of the tree.

Then she looked at him, and began to laugh. Her laugh was wracked with pain.

"Just like us, no?" She said breathlessly, "The higher the boughs get, the further we look up, the fewer the good things get. We're like that. The more the years go by, the lesser good it brings. Or maybe, there wasn't anything to begin with in the first place. Even at this point, we don't bother remembering because it's too far from the past and pointless. I think we're like that."

She laughed again, in pain and in her misery. He silenced her by cutting into her radius and seizing her lips. Had she laughed to mock their hopeless situation? Perhaps. But Cagalli was not a derisive person by nature- she had laughed in their helplessness.

They had soon escaped from the maddening world there, only to have been entwined in each other's arms and to experience the giddying, madly beautiful voyage they provided each other. She had asked to visit his house- for old times' sake. He had agreed. But she had been drunk, and honor had not been strong enough to rein in taut desire for him, and the fear of being hurt again did not deter the tightened desperation for her.

At first he had tried to push her away, told her in a low voice that she was making a mistake, and then she only tightened the arms around either side of his neck, made a strange tip-toe that combined itself into a dangerous lurch, and kissed him. Sloppily, clumsily even- she had kissed the side of his mouth rather than his mouth. A kiss would not have hurt anyone. But it hurt him. He might have let go of her- but he didn't know how to after that. The air was cold that night, and she was warm and soft in his arms. There was nearly no room for a choice. But then, he had been besotted since the first time he had met her- what more, this?

The tea he had made that night went ignored.

They did not celebrate Christmas- they realized that about each other that night. She did not because she had not celebrated Christmas since she was a child with only the caretakers at home with her, and he did not because his father never did and his mother had killed the tradition of a mother-and-son occasion because she had been killed. There was that hopelessness again.

But it hadn't mattered that night, even as he taught her how to respond to his touch and learnt how to love her all over again in her delicate inexperience and the way she unconsciously drew him to her.

He hadn't slept that night- afraid that she would awake and leave a cold bed and take an even colder heart away. He had ensured that she was well-dressed, dressed in an old shirt of his, clean and comfortable nevertheless, because the night was chilly. The morning would be a new start, he had thought.

But then, it had been a miscalculation in the first place- if alcohol had made her inhabitations melt away, then it had been a double-edged sword. When morning came, she wandered into the kitchen where he was making breakfast, greeted him a little awkwardly, and thanked him for allowing her to stay over.

He had kept silent, although his eyes had strayed to her neck. The signs were there. He screamed, silently, desperately, for her to remember how they had held each other, and how she had cried his name and cried for him, and then, she noticed his eyes boring holes. Self-consciously, her hands wandered to her neck, and she grinned embarrassedly.

"I guess I was a little insane when I was drunk." She proceeded to apologize. "Was there mistletoe at the doorstep? I remember," She looked guilty,"Yelling at you and telling you to uh- kiss. There must have been mistletoe."

"Yes." He lied.

'Why?' He cried in his head.

"Aren't you going to think the worst of me? Especially since you can't quite remember anything more than the Christmas tree? After all, if you wake up with hickeys and different clothes, suspicion is normal." He managed.

The teapot in his hand must have looked quite ridiculous. There were scrambled eggs steaming on the table. Her eyes did not even have a question or a hint of suspicion.

He wanted her to remember. She would retch at the sudden show of the lack of his morality in the face of the dust of the former broken dreams, and he would risk more than a slap. But something pleaded for her to remember the night and to remember him.

She shrugged. "Mistletoe is a tradition, and I vaguely remember you telling me to wear this shirt. I mean, that gown was sure uncomfortable to be in. Besides you're Athrun. You'd never be anything less than honorable."

He couldn't bear to tell her otherwise. He smiled wanly and watched her tuck in.

"Oh, I almost forgot," She had said suddenly, "Merry Christmas."

It had ended with her taking a cab back to her hotel. She had boarded the shuttle back to Orb a day later, with no recollection of the past or the night before.

And a year had passed since then.

He cringed. How he hated this sort of thing.

Perhaps for this year, for this night, he would ignore the blonde opposite him batting her eyelashes. Besides, he thought dully, she had green eyes. Even warm lighting wouldn't change the green to gold.

"Athrun," a voice said, "Are you going to ignore me this year?"

He looked up and lost his concentration.

Their words came floating back. They were there to remind each other of the foolishness they had displayed in the past. But it was a little more for him- she would never remember but he would remember that night. Joy.

The orchestra began to play a familiar carol. He wanted to throw something at the conductor.

"Hello, Cagalli."

She sat down, next to the girl he had been ignoring for the whole hour. Suddenly, she did not look like Cagalli anymore. Cagalli's eyes were tipped at the ends in an almond angle even though they were wide and sable. And her lips were not pouty although they were full and soft. The difference was quite startling. The blonde sniffed and flounced away- prompting Cagalli to stare. Could women sense that sort of thing so easily?

"I see that the Minister of Defense's cousin doesn't like me," Cagalli observed simply. She toyed with her fork and smiled shyly. Her comment had been made for only his ears, and he laughed a little, enjoying the proximity of her presence although the pain was almost overbearing and the rush in his ears was deafening. Some men were already looking over at her- he wanted to take her and escape.

He did not know how to answer to the comment, however. What would he have said? That he had been considering bedding that girl for a reason to not be lonely and drunk on Christmas Eve?

She looked at him and there was an awkwardness he recognized from memory. Still the same.

"Did you see the tree tonight?" He said carefully. He wanted her to remember- he realized this suddenly, but then she dashed his hopes by looking puzzle at his question that was apparently related to nothing.

"Not really." She answered, facing him in her familiar, rather direct way, although there was an indelible shyness in her eyes as she looked at him, "I only saw it when I passed by, on my way here."

Was there a chance of her remembering anything at all?

He stood up. "I'd like you to see it with me."

Perhaps she had an inkling of what had happened that night. He prayed so.

She looked curious. "I only just arrived."

"You're late," Athrun reminded her, "And there's time to join in the dinner. It won't tale long, I promise."

She shrugged and stood. Tonight, she wore a deep emerald with a silver chain haltering around her neck in a cris-cross above her chest. He wondered if she knew about or understood the effect she had on him and so many others.

As they walked to the tree, the silence enveloped them in a crushing blanket. The same awkwardness was back. But it was a little less stifling than he had expected, perhaps because last Christmas had given them a little more understanding even though it had been minimal for her. Did she even realize what he had taken from her? Perhaps not. In her mind, she was probably still the same and it hurt him even more.

"There it is." She turned the corner, forgetting that he had been the one to suggest seeing the tree and her initial reluctance to follow. But it was understandable- every year, it was the same tree, but every year, it still inspired the same awe.

She gazed at it, reaching out to touch and trace the pattern on one cool, curved bauble. "So beautiful."

There was a rapture he was afraid to think of or to reveal as he looked at her. "Yes. Beautiful."

He waited with a baited breath- waiting for her to say what she had first said last year that had started them on a path only he remembered up till today. Tonight, he promised himself silently, tonight, she would remember. He would make her remember.

But she didn't. There was another miscalculation. She was neither tipsy, nor was she irritated at seeing him. There was a nonchalance he disliked even more. And her silence, even though it was a peaceful one, spurned anger in him.

"Do you notice anything about the tree?"

She took a closer look at it, inspecting it. "No. Is there anything wrong?"

"Yes. Look carefully."

She furrowed her brow. "I don't see anything wrong."

He stepped closer, from behind her, and enclosed a palm around her shoulder, and before she could protest, he lifted her chin as high as she could allow, and said, his breath flushed and his voice husky with tenderness, "The highest bough."

"There-," Her eyes widened in amazement, "There's no star!"

"Do you know why?" He said softly. She shook her head, looking bewildered, forgetting about how close their bodies were, and how easily he could have kissed her if he had wanted to.

He looked at her. "Someone once told me that people don't bother reaching for the highest bough because it's pointless. Nobody will look there anyway."

"True," She began to say, "I didn't look there until you told me t-,"

His silence silenced her.

She did not understand, she only gazed at him trustingly, expecting him to continue. But he found that he could not. And something broke in him, and he let go of her, as if she had burnt him.

"I have a tree in my house," He said quietly, eventually, "And for the same reason, I don't hang anything on the highest bough."

She looked at him with pity growing in her eyes- he disliked that. And fear struck in his heart, because she was so fearless in her acceptance of his presence compared to last year, and it seemed that she might have already moved on even while he languished in a struggle to regain the past and struggled to make her regain the past for and with him.

"Athrun," She said softly, "Is anything wrong?"

He wanted to laugh, no, cackle with insanity. Here she was, oblivious as to how tormented he was, so innocent and so unsuspecting of their deepened relationship, unknowing of how much pleasure they had derived from a carnal, primitive desire they had ignored for so long, and how she was so trusting of him. And now she was asking him if anything was wrong.

"No," He said, grievingly, "No."

She stared at him. "Can I visit? I think I'd like to hang something on the tree."

He nodded, blinded by grief and unshed tears. How was he to bring back the past when she did not even remember a single night that might have made the difference? And was he to wreck her trust of him for that single memory?

Was the risk even justified?

He drove and she kept silence. They hung up their coats in his house, and she managed to familiarize herself although, she explained simply, she had been here only once.

He kept his silence, but he guided her to the tree. It was less than half the size of the one they had seen previously, but it had not been decorated as lovingly and the one similarity was the bare bough, the highest of all of them.

"A pity," Cagalli said innocently, "It would look lovelier with something to crown it. Don't you have anything, Athrun?"

She turned to look at him. His face was wild with misery although he hid it with his side-turned profile and his hair shielded his eyes somewhat. But she sensed something even if it was mostly hidden, and tentatively, she took a step towards him and gently took his face in her hands.

He stared at her. "Is that okay?"

"I know it's been less than smooth-sailing for both of us," She managed, stammering a little, "And I know seeing each other again is a bit of a difficult thing, but we don't have to ignore each other like this. You showed me that last year, didn't you? You helped me when I got myself drunk and you helped me see how things can change. We're still friends, aren't we?"

He took her hands from his face, although he did not let go. She looked startled, and a blush crept below her cheeks.

The tree was a luxuriant emerald behind them.

"You don't understand." He said, his eyes tortured. "Last Christmas eve, was- I took advantage of you."

She looked at him, not understanding, then her face changed to disbelief, and she drew in a sharp, inhaled breath, and he waited for something to happen. And then she yanked her hands away, but her clenched them in, and they remained folded and somehow comfortingly warm in his own.

"Do you remember?"

"Oh no," She said in fear, "That couldn't be, oh, no. But, all there was consisted of harmless kissing. Mistletoe, right? Christmas tradition's sake, right?"

"Wrong," He said softly. "I lied about that."

"Why?" She hissed. "I thought it was a dream. So it was true."

"Then you remembered!" He said in a wild burst of hope. "Didn't you understand the circumstances then?"

She looked away, angry and embarrassed. "I-I don't want to remember. I won't blame you. I suppose we will always be reminders of the fools we are when it comes to one another. I can live with that."

"No," He cut in, angry and desperate, "I don't want forgiveness. I just want you to stay."

She looked amazed at what he was saying- and her eyes widened with more than shock. There was fear and the brimming of something more. He knew what it was because it swam in him as well. It was desire.

"Stay?" She said incredulously. "Stay for a night and then have you remind me of how we used to be so we can get up and try to forget in the morning?"

He yanked her closer, although she was beginning to struggle against him. "No. Stay. We'll try to work things out."

"You were never the optimist," Cagalli said bitterly, "Is this desperation or insanity?"

His arms answered for both of them as they wrestled her closer and then with one blinding sweep, pulled her into his embrace so that her arms were folded roughly and her hands nestled against his chest.

"A bit of both."

"Insane, desperate, whatever," She cried, panicking quite clearly, "I can't stay!"

"Why?" He demanded. "You understand what we feel for each other, don't you?"

Her eyes darkened. "So what? We weren't meant for each other. You were supposed to forget and fall in love with another girl, give her the ring I returned, and then live life the way you did before anything even happened with me in the picture. It was as simple as that. Why didn't you?"

Her fists were curled and she began to beat weakly against him. "Why didn't you?"

There was a terrible choking in her, and she sank to the ground, pulling him with her. The truth was difficult to bear, and he wondered if he had the right to try and make her stay. Why did he hurt her so by loving her? And she was crying because of him. And they had hurt each other so.

He waited for her sobs to subside and then wiped the tears with the edges of his wrists. And he looked into her eyes and saw that her lips were trembling.

"Why didn't you?" She whispered, weary and her eyes dulled.

"Because I couldn't." He said finally.

He took her hand and led her to where she would belong to him solely, at least for a few hours, and even when they lay in exhaustion and a calmness washed over them, he kissed her in a frenzy, over and over again.

He did not allow himself to sleep- but when morning came, he brought her to see the tree again. Swathed in a blanket she secured with one hand, the other hand still rubbing her eyes as he held her close to him, she looked at him, and then at the tree.

"There's another reason why I think the highest bough can be bare." He said quietly. "Nobody looks that far ahead. Sometimes, just taking it step by step is good enough."

She looked at him and wondered why, why oh why, she could not regret anything. He was too near, she thought irritably, too near for her to be thinking rationally, too near her and too powerful his touch was, for her to refuse him and to argue. Because they were like butterfly wings on the water, trying to turn against the flow of the river's current, beating back against the tide and fighting to remember while knowing it was better to forget so the pain would dull a little.

Every year would be the same.

Rashly, she put her arms around him, not knowing when she would see him again after Christmas, not knowing if they had made a mistake again by recalling the past, not knowing if it was a taboo to leave things here like that and have him kiss her and cradle her while knowing that she would have to let go and return.

When she left, he waved a little. But he kissed her before she took the step out of the door, and what he whispered to her made her smile ruefully.

A year would pass soon.

And he lighted the candles, one at a time, noticing how golden his house was in the glow of the remnants of shattered dreams but rekindled hopes.

The highest bough was still left bare.

* * *

A/N: This is a Christmas present of sorts to all my lovely readers. Thanks for such a nice year, and may we all have a great one ahead! P.S. This might have been an alternate ending to TBT, but I preferred one that tied everything together. 


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